The King's Barn or Joan's Tale as Told by Martin Pippin in the Apple-Orchard

THE KINGS BARN or JOANS TALE As told by Martin Pippin in the Apple-Orchard -- INTRODUCTION - To account for the telling of this tale, and for the silly talk which begins, cotlcludes, and riddles it throughout, you should know that it is one of the Tales told by Martin Pippin to Six Milkmaids, who were set as a guard above their Masters lovely Daughter, lest she should break from her prison and go to the arms of her love. His name was Robin Rue, and hers was Gillian Gillman. As for the prison, it was nothing more nor less than a Well-House with a mossy pent roof, in the middle of an Apple-Orchard where the Six Milkmaids, who had all forsworn the love of man, waked and slept, and lived day in day out and there they were condemned to stay, until the Farmers Daughter should stop weeping for her love. The names of the Milkmaids were Joscelyn, Joyce and Jennifer, Jessica, Jane and Little Joan and to the care of each was confided one key of the padlock with six locks which hung on the door of the Well-House. Their days in the Apple-Orchard, however, began at last to pall and though they wished for no mans company, not they, holding love and such things in the greatest of scorn, they longed for the time when Gillian would give over weeping, and they could return to the milking of their cows. But they learned from a passing Gipsy that the only cure for a girls Love-Tale was the telling of six brand-new Love-Tales that no woman had ever heard before and where such a cure could come from, the Milkmaids could not imagine. It 5 Introduction began to look to them as though they must stay in the Apple-Orchard until they died. Now all these things chanced to come to the knowledge of Martin Pippin, aragged, wandering fellow with a lute on his back and songs in his head. In the course of his wanderings he fell in with Robin Rue, heard his sad story, and desired to befriend the two weeping lovers. He gained admittance into the Apple-Orchard by means of his songs, and not, I must beg you to believe, because he was a man and when the Six Milkmaids discovered that he had as many stories as songs in his head, they commanded him to stay with them and cure their mistress. This he agreed to it became their custom of an evening to cluster outside the Well-House in an old Apple-tree that had a Swing in it and one of the Milkmaids would occupy this Swing, while Martin related, in a voice that Gillian could not fail to hear, the story which was to form a sixth part of her cure. The Tale with which we are now concerned was the First Tale told by Martin Pi pin to Gillian Gillman, and, since they were oblige c to overhear it, to the Six Milkmaids who had forsworn love. And though Martin Pippin gave it the name of The Kings Barn, there is reason to suppose that he always thought of it afterwards as Joans Tale, since on this occasion it was Little Joan who sat in the Swing while he told it. Before he began, however, it was necessary for him to have the nature of things explained to him, and it is here, at the moment of his entrance into the Apple-Orchard, that I leave him to speak for himself. PRELUDE TO JOANS TALE AND now, said Martin Pippin, what exactly do you require of me If you please, said little Joan, you are to tell us a love-story that has never been told before. But we have reason to fear, added Jane, that there is no such story left in all the world. There you are wrong, said Martin, foron the contrary no love-story has ever been told twice. I never heard any tale of lovers that did not seem to me as new as the world on its first morning. I am glad you have a taste for love-stories. We have not, said Joscelyn, very quickly. No indeed cried her five fellows...